DESCRIPTION (Adapted from the Applicant s Description): Funding is requested in this proposal to assist in the support of the VII Congress of Human Auxology to be held in 1997 at the University of Pennsylvania and the children s Hospital of Philadelphia. The theme of this Congress is Children in Context. The funds are requested from NIH will be used primarily in three ways: 1) To provide travel and per diem for invited lecturers from the USA; 2) To help defray the costs of attendance of new investigators from the medical and basic sciences; 3) To assist in the promulgation of the approximately 300 lecturers (plenary and symposium), papers, and posters which will be presented during the course of the meeting. In particular, this Congress will present to an international body of health professionals and basic scientists the information on the mechanisms of growth of children, on factors responsible for differential growth outcomes resulting from genetic, endocrinological, and ecological causes, on responses to treatment of children with specific diseases states and as a result of public health interventions, and on the assessment of growth status in the clinic and in international programs of growth monitoring.